Not at all - there were numerous sympathisers across the galaxy who they tried to contact for support, but who weren't able to send anything. That network by itself will allow the Resistance to rebuild.

And I don't see why it should be implausible that there'd be a time jump between 8 and 9 even though there wasn't much of one between 7 and 8: what sets "zero time jumps" as a rule from now on? For that matter, what better way to finesse the lack of Carrie Fisher than to have a time jump?

For all their flaws, both the original and prequel trilogies have significant roles for non-main cast members. Wedge, who I brought up before, is an important example. But The Last Jedi deliberately killed off EVERY pilot except Poe in the hanger explosion. You also have the fact that the entire Rebel fleet in Return of the Jedi, except for Lando, is composed of non-main cast members, and they are vital to the success of the plan.

I was referring to the events of the film when I said that the survivors haven't accomplished anything. Truthfully, only dead people accomplished anything - the bomber who destroyed the dreadnought - dead. Holdo, who destroyed most of the fleet - dead. Luke - delayed the First Order, played psychological warfare against Ren - dead. Everyone who could have accomplished something is prevented from doing so - Finn, Poe, Rey - all alive, all have less than they started with to show for their efforts.

I think survival in the face of the odds is probably the aim they were showing for, but this wasn't really survival to me. There is no plausible way, unless they have a massive time jump between 8 and 9 (which, since there was zero time jump between 7 and 8, seems implausible) for 10 people to have any kind of plausible chance to defeat even the force of the First Order that was left after the hyperspace ram. And that's not counting that we know there are other dreadnoughts. They haven't survived - they've used 90% of their forces as meat shields for the main characters.

Is it not the case that a non-speaking cast member will intrinsically seem less important in a movie because the very nature of the format puts attention on characters who actually say shit and do stuff?

I will note that Rose has been added to the main cast in this movie too, so it's not like the core cast is this impregnable elite which new characters cannot join.

How, exactly, would you make a non-speaking unnamed background cast member seem as important as Rose without having them speak and giving them a name?

I think it is entirely too soon to declare that the survivors have accomplished nothing since the film ends immediately after they escape. Exactly what do you expect them to have accomplished in the five minutes between them boarding the Falcon and the end credits rolling?

For that matter, isn't the entire thesis of the movie that survival in the face of implacable hostility is an accomplishment in its own right?

Yes. About 10. From the thousands who originally crewed the one ship they had left. And even the ones who survived accomplished exactly nothing.

I've heard that argument about Holdo, and I don't find it convincing at all. Possibly because the actual plan wasn't that smart in the first place. So the reveal didn't sound like "Oh, Holdo had a great plan," more like "Oh, Holdo had a plan that was only slightly less dumb than the one she pretended to have."

But nope: if you're a non-speaking cast member, you're useless. The resistance only needs like 10 people to survive.

Hang on, don't numerous non-speaking cast members escape to form the core of the new resistance on the Falcon?

I said right after watching the film that it's only so long because everyone makes the dumbest choice possible, then refuses to talk about it with anyone. And it happens over and over again.

In defence of Holdo: her plan depended on surprising the First Order forces. Holdo could not 100% know for sure that nobody in the Resistance was a First Order spy, and given the extensive use made by the First Order (and the Empire before them) of spies and turncoats she would be entirely justified in keeping her plans to an extremely limited set of people on a need-to-know basis, because if the plans leaked to the Imperials they'd be scuppered.

Poe, of course, is not included in that need-to-know set of people, because he's been demoted for being a dumbshit.

Holdo's plan was one which you would fully expect to keep secret even from your own, and Poe's behaviour absolutely justified him being kept in the dark. People are determined to see a plot hole here where there just simply, objectively isn't one.

Re: the First Order being similar to the Empire - that's the whole point, the entire idea is that if you don't maintain vigilance about the resurgence of fascism the work done by past generations to drop it and keep it down is entirely wasted.

Yes Disney Star Wars is 0 for 3 on movies, about 1.5 for dozens on books and comics.

I read the first five or so issues of Watson and Holmes - it was fun, but felt a bit too much like amateurs, or pros who didn't feel like they got paid enough, so it wasn't very polished. It was enjoyable, I just feel like I wanted a more finished product from a cool concept like that.

I think Robinson is definitely right that the film is going for a bleak tone (since it is Rian Johnson, after all), but it's also annoyingly glib and cartoony. Poe's assault on the dreadnought is ridiculous, even for Star Wars standards, and I loathe the way the film is reinforcing the main-character elitism or red-shirtism that Star Wars has usually worked against a bit with characters like Wedge. But nope: if you're a non-speaking cast member, you're useless. The resistance only needs like 10 people to survive.

I still loathe Kylo Ren, but I think he had more to work with here, and I actually enjoyed his time on screen, as opposed to last film, where I just wanted to not be watching him.

Despite my dislike of Taran Wanderer (which I know some folk on the Ferretbrain love ;) ), I actually really like the reveal of "Rey Random," as some pissed of tumblr fans termed her. But it doesn't undo the main character elitism.

Holdo and Poe both deserve huge amounts of blame for literally destroying all but 10 rebels. Ugh. I said right after watching the film that it's only so long because everyone makes the dumbest choice possible, then refuses to talk about it with anyone. And it happens over and over again.

Rogue Podron is, unsurprisingly, a big highlight of the week for me. And if you keep listening, you'll hear a lot of my twitter responses read by the hosts. ;)

I do hope that Arthur is right and there won't be a redemption for Kylo. I don't hate him quite as much as I did after Force Awakens, but I still hate him a lot.

(I will defend the Wedge, Tycho, and Syal parts of Legacy of the Force a lot! But the rest of the books are pretty bad. Oh, wait, I also liked Seha. I also think that Legacy of the Force, for all that it's not good, is more enjoyable to me than the new films. Mostly because it has Wedge.)

I do think that at least the Allston X-Wing novels are very good. Definitely a ton better than a huge chunk of non-tie-in science fiction I've read.

I do feel for Robinson in the way the later EU books ruined the earlier ones - but except for Mercy Kill, I have basically written out all of the things I hate from my personal canon. I hate that I've become a "personal canon" Star Wars fan, but I am a lot happier about my old books than I used to be!

If they try to make an Old Republic movie, I'm going to be really disappointed in how much worse it will be than Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2. :)

As for Arthur's point that the rise of the First Order is a symbolic warning to always be vigilant - I think that's not super useful, since there's really nothing that distinguishes the First Order from the Empire other than the name. I think a different threat would have been much more interesting and useful even from a social commentary perspective.

Daniel - I think you make an excellent point with Invincible's Tahiri/Anakin grossness. I personally have never really seen why people give Denning such a pass on his series enders, since they're really not better than his middle books. I also think a lot of fans were so tired and burnt out that they just didn't go past Mara's death - I know I just stopped doing any Star Wars for about a year when that happened. I did get to Invincible, but by that point, it was clear that the Star Wars I loved wasn't coming back.

Robinson - yes, I have said that I didn't find Fisher's performance that interesting or strong in either of the two new movies. I quite like her in the originals, though.

Arthur: I will stick to vicariously enjoying Expanded Universe material through the hilarious Expounded Universe podcast's epic-length takedowns of it. They're working their way through The Crystal Star right now and it's delightfully goofybubbles.

Thanks for bringing this podcast to my attention: I'd never heard about it before, but I'm enjoying the other podcasts I've listened to that take an in-depth look at old Expanded Universe material. It's been ages since I read Crystal Star, and I don't remember thinking much about it one way or another except that the alien villain was certainly imaginative. Apparently, though, it has a legendarily bad reputation in fandom, so I'll be interested to check in and see why that is. But, because I'm a first things first kind of person, I'll have to check out what they thought of Shadows of the Empire.

Daniel F: For me, at least, that series is the worst and most unpleasant piece of Star Wars material ever published.

One thing we agree on, at the least, then.

I would, I suppose, support a retcon trimming of the EU down to The Unifying Force as the cut-off point, because once you cut the NJO I think you’ve probably lost too much that’s worthwhile.

That sounds reasonable, though I'd sorely miss Chewie and Anakin, and be highly exasperated at the god-modding of Jacen in contrast to Jaina.

Looking at it from the perspective of Disney/Lucasfilm, though, if they wanted to feature the original trilogy cast, and intended to retain any of the Expanded Universe, they'd pretty much have to wipe out New Jedi Order as well.

Everything that happened in the New Republic era is a fairly predictable extension from the end of Return of the Jedi. Which is to say, you could dump somebody who's seen the original films but not read any of the books into a story set after Survivor's Quest and have them up to speed in under five minutes: this is Luke's wife, these are Leia and Han's kids and their friends, they're at peace with what's left of the Empire, no problem.

Once you get to New Jedi Order, though, you'd have to include so much backstory to explain these scarred up baddies who use organic technology and they almost took over the galaxy, and Leia and Han had another kid but he's dead now, and so's Chewie (though that latter could make a really cool flashback), and the shape of the galaxy is entirely different, etc.

Really, though, that still leaves two problems from their perspective. The first is that even if you wipe out NJO and the Legacy Era, they've still got decades of continuity which - again, from their perspective - is only going to bog things down necessarily. Yeah, sorry, we can't do this really cool thing with, say, the Jedi, because it contradicts some plot point from a 20-year-old novel that got picked up by other authors and run with.

The second problem is that, as we may've touched on already, because everyone's interests in and sensibilities about Star Wars are different, everyone has different ideas about what constituted the best and the worst of the EU. Even if they just erased the Legacy Era and somehow resolved the weight of previous canon and the confusion of NJO, they'd still be dealing with fan outcry over eliminating the Legacy Era, because hard as it is for me to understand, there are probably fans for whom that era was the favorite. And I suspect the backlash in that scenario would actually be worse, because it would feel like Lucasfilm/Disney were playing favorites, supporting some parts of the canon while rejecting others. Whereas, if you just scuttle the whole thing and only leave the movies and Lucas-consulting TV show, you're pissing off everyone more or less equally, so the outcry is apt to be less vociferous.

Basically their options were 1) declare all of the EU to be canon and go on from there. I've already explained why this option was unattractive. 2) Create some weird hybrid canon/non-canon of the EU, which would be problematic for the reasons I gave above. 3) wipe out the whole EU and start out with an almost entirely clean slate.

Option 4) would've been to eliminate the EU officially, and do what they were going to do with the movies, but leave the first, say, 20 years post-Return of the Jedi deliberately ambiguous. Some parts of the EU would clearly be non-canon, but you could leave fans to decide for themselves whether they believed the general shape of the stories were still there or not.

4) would've been my preference, but I guess the story group decided they needed to have everything which happened between the original and the sequel trilogy mapped out for sure, perhaps with good reason.

So I can see why, from their viewpoint, option 3) was pretty much the only rational choice. There's a lot I don't like about it, and were it not for my having already been totally disillusioned with the EU as a whole (despite liking and admiring a great deal of the stories), I would've been outraged. But I believe I get the reasoning behind the decision.

Like you, I'm happy to continue the discussion some more, even though it looks like we're not going to reach an agreement on how we view the decision to phase out the Expanded Universe.

Regarding the Empire in the Legacy comics, I’m actually not sure whether you mean the One Sith or the Galactic Empire under the Fels. I tend to treat them separately, although the One Sith do take over a significant proportion of the Empire.

I meant the One Sith, which, as you say, took over a significant portion of the Fel Empire. It was at least as much the same Empire of the original trilogy under the One Sith as the First Order is.

In the sequel films, it seems as though the Empire has fallen apart except for its most radical elements, who double down and become a genuinely fascist cult. In the EU, the Empire goes through several rounds of civil war, most of the extremists get themselves killed off, leaving moderates with the reins, and they end up reforming the Empire into a less fascist, perhaps even moderately respectable government.

Except that, as per the Legacy comics (and Fate of the Jedi, if what I've gathered from other sources is accurate), the extremists weren't all killed off, and just keep popping up like cockroaches. They're the ones who turned the bulk of the Fel Empire over to the One Sith, and I think were up to some kind of shenanigans in the Fate books, also.

And according to the third book in Chuck Wendig's Aftermath trilogy, the Empire of the Disney canon was deliberately demolished by an agent of Palpatine's after the Battle of Endor (under the logic that they failed to keep Palpatine alive, so f*** them), and the surviving remnant reconstituted into the First Order over the following three decades. Which actually seems pretty in-character for Palpatine, but makes the First Order's ability to build itself up into a viable threat to the New Republic seem even more wildly implausible.

I prefer for the new canon to do something entirely new, rather than retread old plots.

Oh, I agree. It's why I'm so annoyed at the films recycling so many plot elements and character arcs from the original trilogy. If they're going to have Thrawn in the new canon, I don't want them to do a tweaked version of the Thrawn trilogy, I want him to have a new story - just so long as that new story is as clever and engrossing as the 90s trilogy, which sadly seems unlikely.

Likewise, with Mara: I want her to be in the new canon, as a former trusted agent of Palpatine, who hates Luke's guts and wants to kill him, but winds up becoming entangled in one of his adventures searching the galaxy for old Jedi lore, and they have to work together and they finally part as friends. Same basic arc as in the Thrawn trilogy, but a different adventure. (And sadly, they don't stay in touch and eventually get married, but hey, it's something; and it means she could still be alive out there, somewhere, rather than killed off.)

If they were just going to do characters like Thrawn or Mara again, why jettison the EU in the first place?

So they can retain elements from the EU that they like, and fit their vision for the saga, without being shackled to all the other continuity which didn't fit their vision? It's basically the same philosophy Lucas used in making the prequels - bringing in some EU elements he liked, and disregarding parts he didn't. Or Dave Filoni and the rest of his creative team with Clone Wars. Hell, Karen Traviss rage quit writing the EU after they retconned her interpretation of the Mandalorians - not that I, personally, was sorry to see her go.

Regarding the OT cast: I’m not sure I follow you here, because I felt their appearances here were not as robust as they were in the past, and sometimes do approach cameo status ... I suspect I am also in the minority in not being very impressed by Carrie Fisher’s performance

Maybe the minority, but hardly alone. I forget who else I've seen make that claim - was it you, Ibmiller? - definitely someone.

Personally, I rarely notice even an awful performance, so the fact that her acting worked for me says very little.

Regarding the Big Three; according to something my sister read or saw somewhere, the plan for the sequels was that the first would focus on Han, the second on Luke, and the third on Leia. Obviously that's cocked up with Ms. Fisher's untimely passing, but it makes sense to me why her roles in VII and VIII are glorified cameos, and Mark Hamill's in VII was an actual cameo.

As for being less robust: if you can give me some specific examples, I can try to explain why those elements worked better for me than they did for you, but failing that, I'm afraid I can't say more than I already have.

(I am relieved Anthony Daniels turned down the offer to reprise his role as Wedge in The Force Awakens, because apparently they were going to kill his character off on Jakku, which would've been an awful cheap shot.)

I suspect most EU fans get into the habit of picking and choosing the material they like and ignoring the rest.

I certainly tried, and it worked with obscure material like the Jedi Prince books, but the Legacy era stories were too central to the EU canon for me to ignore.

I was thinking of the bit in Invincible where a 28 year old woman sexually abuses a 14 year old, and the incredibly tasteless way in which it's presented.

As previously mentioned, I didn't even make it that far. The breaking point for me was watching a character I'd liked and followed for a decade go completely off the rails so the writers could stuff him into a recycled Fall of Anakin Skywalker arc - transforming all the characters close to him into clueless imbeciles in the process; short-changing the female twin in a twin pair to build up her brother's importance; fridging one of my favorite characters in the franchise in a massively inane cheap-shot death; and capping it off by having Luke fucking Skywalker save somebody's life only so he can go ahead and murder them personally. That last tidbit alone outstrips any alleged character derailment in the sequels by several quadrillion parsecs in my book.

Again, didn't make it as far as the sexual abuse scene, but eww. Seriously eww.

I find it really disappointing that the fandom bring up Mara's death or Jaina's disempowerment or the Mandalorian material as being the problems with LotF, and let this pass. All those things are problems - Jaina in Revelation is probably the worst of them - but it seems like the fandom just glided over the torture-and-sexual-abuse scene. Ugh.

In my case, it's a matter of having bailed on the series long before we reached that part. But yes, that's immensely f*cked up, and arguably worse than the other offensive aspects of the series, because most of those issues are only major problems from a continuity perspective*. Whereas mishandling torture and sexual abuse in such a flagrant manner is vile on the face of it.

*Well, disempowering Jaina and killing off Mara like that is still really sexist, but to me it feels like a different order of magnitude.

I'm sorry to mention it, but... I find it really disappointing that the fandom bring up Mara's death or Jaina's disempowerment or the Mandalorian material as being the problems with LotF, and let this pass. All those things are problems - Jaina in Revelation is probably the worst of them - but it seems like the fandom just glided over the torture-and-sexual-abuse scene. Ugh.

I will stick to vicariously enjoying Expanded Universe material through the hilarious Expounded Universe podcast's epic-length takedowns of it. They're working their way through The Crystal Star right now and it's delightfully goofybubbles.

You are saying there's Star Wars experiences more unpleasant than watching Itchy getting off to his VR holoporn?

I was thinking of the bit in Invincible where a 28 year old woman sexually abuses a 14 year old, and the incredibly tasteless way in which it's presented. I don't care which Star Wars movies you prefer, that's not okay.

As with Luke in The Last Jedi, I found myself much more comfortable with the film if I stopped trying to pretend that Hamill’s or Fisher’s characters were the same people as their OT characters.

Well... in a very real sense they're not. They're 30 years older and a lot of shit happens in that span.

30 years ago I was grasping basic reading and numeracy. 30 years from now and I could end up with adult offspring having kids of their own. If people don't change radically in 30 years that would be a sign of incredible personal stagnation.

(At least in human beings. C3P0 seems to be the same as ever, probably because they've never bothered reprogramming him. R2-D2 the same, though we don't see much of him because presumably he's a bit like that creaky old Amiga you're a bit careful about booting up because you can't get the parts any more to repair it. Chewbacca remains Chewbacca, but if I remember right wookies have an absurd lifespan anyway so 30 years might not be such a big deal to him. Yoda a force ghost he is.)

For me, at least, that series is the worst and most unpleasant piece of Star Wars material ever published. Even the likes of The Crystal Star, The Glove of Darth Vader, or the much-maligned Holiday Special are merely goofy and stupid.

You are saying there's Star Wars experiences more unpleasant than watching Itchy getting off to his VR holoporn?

Well, as I’ve said, I don’t think there’s any defending Legacy of the Force. For me, at least, that series is the worst and most unpleasant piece of Star Wars material ever published. Even the likes of The Crystal Star, The Glove of Darth Vader, or the much-maligned Holiday Special are merely goofy and stupid. LotF genuinely feels quite misanthropic and awful, and I don’t like to be reminded of its existence if at all possible.

So I would have supported a retcon of LotF. I would, I suppose, support a retcon trimming of the EU down to The Unifying Force as the cut-off point, because once you cut the NJO I think you’ve probably lost too much that’s worthwhile. Still, as it is, I would rather have the EU plus the awful black mark of LotF than have the post-Disney canon, since even with LotF I feel there is more there that’s worth building on.

I understand why you might feel the opposite, so I’d be happy to leave it there, I guess?

But a few more comments just for the hell of it. ;)

Regarding the Empire in the Legacy comics, I’m actually not sure whether you mean the One Sith or the Galactic Empire under the Fels. I tend to treat them separately, although the One Sith do take over a significant proportion of the Empire. One of the most striking differences for me between the new and old continuities is the direction they’ve taken the Empire. The Empire in the films was always at least quasi-fascist. In the sequel films, it seems as though the Empire has fallen apart except for its most radical elements, who double down and become a genuinely fascist cult. In the EU, the Empire goes through several rounds of civil war, most of the extremists get themselves killed off, leaving moderates with the reins, and they end up reforming the Empire into a less fascist, perhaps even moderately respectable government. It’s like seeing both a ‘bad ending’ and a ‘good ending’ for the Empire: really interesting stuff. I love it from a roleplaying perspective, as it gives me more resources to build the Empire into anything I need it to be, including both ‘dark’ and ‘light’ versions.

Regarding using the old continuity in the new canon… ah, I might sound hypocritical here, but I’m actually not a fan of that. The First Order is a good example: I prefer for the new canon to do something entirely new, rather than retread old plots. I don’t need a new canon version of Thrawn if he’s just going to do the same thing as the old Thrawn, for example. So my preference would actually be for a quicker divergence. The same for a character like Mara Jade. I’m obviously a big fan of Mara, but to me it would feel hollow to have a new, pseudo-Mara separate from any of the stories in which Mara originally featured. I’d rather the new material do something genuinely new. If they were just going to do characters like Thrawn or Mara again, why jettison the EU in the first place?

Regarding the OT cast: I’m not sure I follow you here, because I felt their appearances here were not as robust as they were in the past, and sometimes do approach cameo status. Leia, for instance, feels to me like she appears mainly in order to baptise the new leadership of the Rebellion. I suspect I am also in the minority in not being very impressed by Carrie Fisher’s performance, but perhaps the less said about that the better. As with Luke in The Last Jedi, I found myself much more comfortable with the film if I stopped trying to pretend that Hamill’s or Fisher’s characters were the same people as their OT characters. For whatever reason, I can’t quite make that connection.

As to nihilism again… I guess it comes back to what I said at the start. Yes, there are parts of the EU that I ignore, and LotF is among them. I suspect most EU fans get into the habit of picking and choosing the material they like and ignoring the rest. For me, the sequel trilogy so far is better than LotF… but not actually by very much, and it comes at the cost of potentially building on a lot of material that I did enjoy. So for me personally, it was not worth it. If it was to you, though, well, I’m glad that you’re enjoying the films!

@Daniel F: I missed a.bit but I have to say I'm satisfied with what they have done with the characters.

And in general, I've always had a bit of a looser interpretation of star wars cannon then a lot of people. By the time I really started getting into star wars there were already conflicting books. The original trilogy had their "improvements" added to them. A ton of games of varying levels of cannon which also contrasted each other. I don't feel bad about losing the expanded universe because I could never get into it.

I care more about this trilogy standing on its own. I'm still going to dock it if it moves away from what I consider star wars. But my closest tie to anything that came before was the clone war trilogy, which is pretty dark, and the old battelfront games.

I also know that differnt people will view this differently. And thats a good thing. It would be a pretty boring world of everyone shared aesthetic taste. And I'm sure as they make more movies the chanve of one being in the vein you want it too, and that I don't, will only go up.

Let's just say that if they were making a sequel trilogy during a comparable period in the old EU continuity, instead of the Disney canon, "Jake Skywalker" isn't even on the map in terms of nicknames you'd need to get through it. I had to construct some pretty elaborate ones and I gave up part way through.

@Arthur:Yeah, I think I said already that I thought The Last Jedi was a lot less derivative than The Force Awakens. Most of the stuff which feels like a rehashing rather than reconfiguation, as you put it, revolves around Kylo Ren, Snoke, and the First Order, which were already established in the previous movie, so Johnson and co.'s hands were somewhat tied. They could've tried to make Snoke a well-defined character distinct from the Palpatine archetype, but I don't really mind that they didn't. Likewise, while the Primary Climax in Snoke's Throne Room was painfully obvious due to how closely it paralleled the climax of Return of the Jedi, I've already explained why, in my mind, it still worked really well. The only other thing is that the Secondary Climax on Crait leaned a little heavily on Battle of Hoth imagery, but that's a trivial point.

I guess what worries me going forward is that because Kylo Ren plays so closely into the Darth Vader archetype, I find it difficult to imagine a conclusion to his storyline in IX that's 1) satisfying and 2) surprising. And because so much of the plot is bound up in defeating the villain, that means I have a hard time imagining a climax to the trilogy (and therefore the nine-movie cycle) that's satisfying and surprising.

Daniel F: I recognise that you can’t argue someone into changing an emotional reaction

Absolutely. And I'm not trying to change your mind on this - just trying to explain why, in my mind, swapping out the sequel trilogy for the old Expanded Universe is preferable.

I find it a bit difficult to parse your position on Legacy here.

Sorry for the lack of clarity on my part. I disliked the Legacy comics for several reasons, but they're not my main source of ire.

The point I was trying to make was mainly about the Legacy era novels, especially Legacy of the Force and Crucible, which between them managed to irrevocably wreck pretty much every single one of my favorite Star Wars characters in one way or another, sometimes killing them off in the process*. Those books did so many things I dislike which are either absent from the sequel trilogy or much less annoyingly executed (which is not to say that it isn't still very annoying). About the only thing the books didn't do which the sequels sorta did, is have the Sith and Empire win and take over the galaxy again so that the heroes would be forced to retread the Rebellion Against the Empire plot from the original trilogy all over again. Except that's exactly what happened in the Legacy comics (and again, even more annoyingly in my highly biased and subjective opinion).

*Said wrecking being my main reason for happily bidding farewell to the EU. Before the 2014 announcement, the canonical ending to all my favorite characters' storylines was pretty much universally miserable and awful, which to me made all their earlier adventures feel like at best worthless, and at worst a sick joke at my expense.

So while my main contempt is reserved for Legacy of the Force, the set up of the Legacy comics solidified the Legacy era (and hence, very sadly, the Expanded Universe as a whole), as a much less desirable ultimate fate for the Star Wars universe and my favorite Star Wars characters than the sequel trilogy from my perspective. Does that explain it any better?

(Another nice thing for me about the sequels as opposed to the Legacy comics is that at least the original trilogy heroes get to play an active role in fighting back against the Sith 2.0 and Empire 2.0, rather than, at most, playing Force Ghost mentors to arguably the least likable protagonist in any Star Wars product ever.)

My counterpoint responses:

1) Sorry, I meant the Sith Empire's total victory at the start of the Legacy comics, in contrast to the First Order's partial victory at the start of the sequel trilogy. I realize it's not the most rational distinction and likely doesn't hold up under close scrutiny; but again, I never meant to imply these reasons are anything but subjective, and they work for me.

2) A large part of my annoyance is that in the case of both the sequel trilogy and the Legacy comics, it's not an unrelated threat they're facing - it's the same Empire and the same Sith (or near enough), sometimes without even the serial numbers filed off. Granted, the Legacy comics did slightly better than the sequels in not having one of the main antagonists be yet another Skywalker descendant who fell to the dark side - it just had utterly bland, by-the-numbers villains with often silly names and silly costumes, with the big twist being that their leader used to be a minor supporting character in the Republic comics. *Yawn*. And, again, LotF dipped into the Fallen Skywalker well (totally rewriting several established characters in the process), so the Legacy era and EU as a whole don't get a point over the sequels in that regard.

3) Fair enough. Personally, I love Rey, Finn, and Poe, and I really like Rose, so I find the sequel trilogy much more enjoyable on the strength of that alone. And on the flipside, while I kinda liked some of the supporting characters in the Legacy comics, none of them stood out for me to a sufficient extent to make up for the walking black hole of personality that served as the series protagonist.

I think that while Legacy has its problems, it was not nearly as… well, I hate to say it, but spiteful towards the OT’s legacy as the sequel trilogy feels so far, at least to me.

If you mean juts the Legacy comics then, well, I don't share your opinion, but I suppose I can see where you're coming from. I'm sorry the sequels don't work as well for you as they do for me. (If we're talking about the Legacy Era as a whole, then I don't know about spiteful, but I would definitely argue it was more cruel and mean-spirited towards them. By, like, a factor of 80. Trillion.)

Even if we say hypothetically that Legacy and the ST are equally as bad, I can at least ignore Legacy and enjoy decades of more interesting post-RotJ material

I guess that's the main difference in our outlooks, and one that's never going to go away. I couldn't ignore Legacy before the Disney deal, because canonically, that was the fate of all the good post-Jedi stories. Didn't matter how good they were, because I knew it all came to shit in the end. If you can view those stories differently, then more power to you, and I'm sorry the Disney canon isn't working as well for you.

it’s a bit sad that I’m not going to see any more material that uses the wealth of resources that was in the EU

I absolutely agree. I think that even with the old continuity jettisoned, there are still so many pieces which could have easily been incorporated into the new canon. And other pieces which would've taken more finesse, but still would've been possible and worth doing (I'm still sore they aren't including Mara Jade - she wouldn't have to be Luke's wife, and the rest of her story would fit in the new continuity okay). Planets, species, and cultures seem to be having an easier way finding their way in, and that'll probably continue, with the exception of specific, obviously problematic examples such as the Yuuzhan Vong or ysalamiri. While I personally count it a net gain, I acknowledge that the loss was profound.

Even if you’re absolutely committed to reusing the OT cast, there’s nothing stopping you from, say, setting the sequels two hundred years after RotJ and having Luke appear as a Force ghost, or including a few flashbacks where relevant

Looking at it from a marketer's viewpoint, though, casual fans who go to the theater to see a Star Wars movie aren't going to see nothing but cameos by the original trilogy cast. They're there to see at least some of the original trilogy folks in prominent roles. (And from my highly subjective viewpoint of a hardcore fan, if it means keeping the Legacy Era in continuity, then Fuck that noise.)

Thanks for sharing that article: there's some things I disagree with in it, but the analysis is uniformly excellent, and it raises many terrific points. I particularly like the discussion of the character arcs and how they carry the themes. The cool dismissal both of sexist and racist complaints against the movie, and of claims that it's some sort of revolutionary addition to the saga, are also highly appreciated.

The alternative is an infinite variety of OTHER options which aren’t destructively nihilistic to the Star Wars legacy: Palpatine Loyalists rebelling against the New Republic. A cold war in a galaxy divided between the Imperial remnant and the New Republic. Droid War. Extra-galactic invasion. Cryogenically frozen Sith army from 10,000 years ago waking up.The sequel trilogy simply lacks ambition.

Strongly agree with this - except the cryogenically frozen Sith army, give them a rest, already. Again, though, the Expanded Universe did the exact same thing, so we're stuck with this asinine option either way.

As for the point about the characters:

Arthur: They are for me.

In particular, Leia in The Last Jedi gets to be bigger and better and more convincingly a badass rebel leader than she was at any point in the original trilogy.

I heartily agree, especially about Leia. With notable exceptions, much of the Expanded Universe (not even just the Legacy Era) didn't really do the character of Leia justice. Whereas not only did I think The Last Jedi serve her well, but also supplemental material like the Moving Target middle grade novel, and Claudia Gray's Bloodline and Leia: A Princess of Alderaan*.

*As an EU fan, I'm still mad at her writing Winter out of continuity in the latter, even though Winter isn't a particular favorite character of mine, because I think she makes a fantastic foil for Leia, and I like the idea of Leia having actual friends growing up. On the other hand, I give Ms. Gray major props for taking Breha, Leia's adopted mom, a literal placeholder character in every previous appearance - which were damn few to begin with - and turning her into an incredibly badass leader and mother figure in her own right. I also love her interpretation of Mon Mothma, even if she only appears briefly.

I can't see where that article is coming from, insinuating the sequel trilogy makes out the original cast to be abject failures. While I dislike that their victory over the Empire and the Sith was largely walked back, that's largely not because of their personal failures. They did their part, and it wasn't enough - which is still pretty pessimistic, but doesn't reflect back on them.

Leia, in particular, is clearly depicted in both movies as an incredible leaders: granted her side is mostly losing, but not for any failures of leadership on her part. Just because the galaxy went to shit doesn't mean Leia personally screwed up. Hell, she's the primary augur holding the whole damn Resistance together in the movies.

She's also shown to have good relationships with friends and co-workers, for the most part. Her only personal "failure" is in her relationships with her husband and her son. Well, political leaders often have imperfect home lives; she doesn't have to be competent at absolutely everything. And from what we see, it doesn't look like Kylo Ren's fall was any fault of hers, either.

Han, for his part, is obviously going through a bad patch when we see him in The Force Awakens, and has devolved to somewhere before he was at the end of Jedi - but not so far back as he was at the beginning of A New Hope. It's not a complete character reboot - he's not indifferent to the plight of others, it's more like he's given up on his own ability to act heroically and do good. But when there's an immediate, pressing need, he leaps into action without hesitation.

In the movie's climax he 1) succeeds along with the other heroes in facilitating Rey's escape from Starkiller Base; 2) successfully helps the Resistance destroy Starkiller Base by bringing down the shields and blowing up the core; 3) overcomes all the fear and regret weighing him down and confronts his son. Kylo's redemption, or lack thereof, was never in Han's hands, so its failure can't be put on him - he stepped up and did the best he could, which is the most anyone can do.

He and Leia are estranged, but they're still on amicable terms, and readily agree they had a good run.

Just because the guy has made some major mistakes and has lost a fair bit of ground doesn't make him categorically a failure. Anymore than the failure of the Empire to stay dead after he helped kill it makes him a failure.

Luke is a harder one to argue. I really wish Johnson and his collaborators had come up with a better reason for Luke to go into hiding than "he was running away." (Like that he was learning ancient wisdom to bring back at some later point, or hiding and training some survivors of the massacre, or gathering up mystical energy or something.) I don't quite buy him giving up and running away from it all after he failed in training Ben.

The failure itself, though - I could just about believe that. Sure, the tragic misunderstanding at the heart of it was melodramatic as all get out, but to me it seemed fitting with Luke's character. I couldn't see him actually trying to murder young Ben in his sleep, but I could absolutely see him succumbing to a moment of weakness. Don't forget, he was on the brink of murdering Vader at the end of Jedi before he came to his senses.

Sure, he doesn't seem to have accomplished much else before his confrontation with Kylo Ren at the end of the film, and like Han, he's clearly made a lot of huge mistakes. But, oh, I dunno, for whatever reason, he doesn't read to me as an abject failure, even before his dramatic comeback.

And, not caring one little jot if I slip into being a broken record here: the complaint of destructive nihilism, and rendering the heroes' accomplishments rendered ultimately meaningless, applies seventy-fold to the old Expanded Universe (and specifically the Legacy Era). At least in this canon they weren't transformed into complete assholes whom we're inexplicably still expected to root for by the end. I really, really wouldn't want to see a movie set in that continuity.

I find it a bit difficult to parse your position on Legacy here. As you recognise, all your criticisms of Legacy can be levelled at the sequel trilogy, and from where I’m standing, I think they actually apply far more relevantly to the sequel trilogy than to Legacy. Legacy is set over a century after RotJ, and there is still a successful living legacy of the OT characters: the surviving Jedi Order, the Galactic Alliance, even the existence of a sympathetic Empire faction is bound up with the actions of the OT characters post-Endor.

I can understand not liking Legacy - for what it’s worth, I don’t like it very much myself – but I have a hard time seeing it as so bad that it’s necessary to wipe the entire EU to get rid of it, especially if the only thing that you’re going to put in its place, the sequel trilogy, repeats all of Legacy’s ostensible sins in a more extreme form.

To the specific counterpoints you made… 1) the Sith in Legacy were in fact defeated, by an Imperial-GA alliance, and they didn’t exactly reign very long, so I’m not sure this follows, 2) I don’t think the rise of an unrelated threat and then that threat’s defeat necessarily invalidates the actions of previous heroes, and 3) while I agree with you that Cade Skywalker in particular is a pillock, all I can say is that I didn’t really fall in love with any of the sequel trilogy’s characters. I liked Finn and Rose, but most of the others I either felt neutral and uninspired towards (Rey) or actively disliked (Poe). I would take Marasiah Fel or Antares Draco over the sequel trilogy characters, I think. That’s not to say that I loved them, but I was a bit more enthusiastic about them.

Still, I recognise that you can’t argue someone into changing an emotional reaction, and the characters in particular are such a deeply subjective matter that there’s little more to say.

I suppose I think that while Legacy has its problems, it was not nearly as… well, I hate to say it, but spiteful towards the OT’s legacy as the sequel trilogy feels so far, at least to me. Even if we say hypothetically that Legacy and the ST are equally as bad, I can at least ignore Legacy and enjoy decades of more interesting post-RotJ material, whereas it seems like the ST is intended to serve as a foundation stone.Of course, I still have those decades of material available, so that’s all good… but it’s a bit sad that I’m not going to see any more material that uses the wealth of resources that was in the EU. So for me, that’s a net loss. That is a massive net loss, and even if I really loved the sequel films, it would not probably not be worth it to me. As it is? I don’t particularly like the sequel films.

Finally, as regards how to make new films… I think there are other options there? Even if you’re absolutely committed to reusing the OT cast, there’s nothing stopping you from, say, setting the sequels two hundred years after RotJ and having Luke appear as a Force ghost, or including a few flashbacks where relevant. Maybe you don’t think that would be satisfying for fans of those characters, but I have to ask… are the sequel films that they made satisfying for fans of those characters?

It’s the “Jake Skywalker” criticism. When it comes to the use of the OT characters, I think I mostly side with Justin Alexander's review: a lot of the sequel films works well on its own merits, but works best if you mentally divorce it from any continuity with the OT.

Whilst I think you can definitely accuse The Force Awakens of rote regurgitation, I honestly don't think the same is true of The Last Jedi - that's not regurgitation that's happening there so much as it is a considered reappraisal and reconfiguration. The movie smashes Empire Strikes BackandReturn of the Jedi together and then assembles the pieces in profoundly unexpected ways.

@Arthur:Fair points. As a matter of fact, you've touched upon one of my biggest criticisms of the sequel trilogy: the fact that so much of it is regurgitating plot points and archetypes from the original trilogy. Indeed, that's a central component of criticism of the sequel trilogy (and goes thirty-fold for my criticism of the Legacy era). Part of it is, indeed, that it's a violation of what as I see as the storytelling spirit of the saga (which I admit is a somewhat subjective viewpoint), and the other part is that it's done in the service of recycling large honking swathes of previous stories - mostly the original trilogy. I find this an incredibly lazy and creatively stunted approach to take. My attitude is: I've already seen this story done once, and probably liked it, now can you give me something new, please? The fact that it also maybe offends some of my sensibilities about the underlying spirit and sensibility of the franchise is just added insult.

For example: I dislike the idea of having one of Anakin Skywalker's descendants turn to the dark side and lead the heavily fascist-inspired villains against the heroes because to me it undermines the optimistic ending to the original trilogy (and by extension, the prequel trilogy), which is something I care about very deeply. But mostly, I object to it because I find it massively derivative and creatively vacuous. "Instead of coming up with an imaginative new villain who fits the Star Wars feel, let's repurpose the Vader, Palpatine, and Empire archetypes so we can run through the same basic scenario as the original trilogy, with some major or minor adjustments."

Granted, they're doing a lot of new and interesting things with Kylo Ren, at least - or they would if they'd gotten an actor who could make all that convincing - but they're still using the Vader archetype as a touchstone for their villain, and constantly invoking the surface trappings of the iconic stories in this way makes the universe of the films feel smaller to me, not larger.

And even then, it's not as if such storytelling laziness (as I see it) is necessarily a dealbreaker: I think that I'm not nearly so inflexible as I've obviously come across in my previous posts. I really, really liked The Force Awakens and thought it was a good Star Wars movie, despite my qualms with how it all wound up for the original trilogy, and how derivative it all was, because it still delivered a fun and engaging story with enjoyable, likable characters. I thought The Last Jedi was a good movie, perhaps a great movie, and I've tried to make clear that most of my complaints against it are entirely personal and subjective, and not something I feel the filmmakers absolutely ought to have done differently.

And as for my remaining drawbacks, all I've said is that I'm not sure if The Last Jedi is a good Star Wars movie. As we've established, every franchise has to explore new territory in some direction or other, or else it will become stagnant very quickly. And because every franchise is composed of a vast plethora of elements, people are going to have differing opinions about which elements are intrinsic to it and which are superfluous, so any new property is, indeed, going to tread on someone's toes. You need to expand your parameters, and you're never going to please absolutely everyone.

At the same time there is what in marketing terms they call "brand recognition." You can mess around with the surface details quite a lot, but you don't want to stray too far away from the core ideals of your brand. There's a reason we have the term "off-brand," and why it's generally not a complimentary term.

I would tentatively identify "an optimistic outlook," "thrilling adventure," "heroes who for the most part are unambiguously heroic" (instead of, say, anti-heroes), "a largely black and white moral framework," and "a very happy ending" as some of the core ideals of the Star Wars brand. If my notion about what constitutes the core of the Star Wars brand is correct - and it easily might not be - then I think it would be fair to criticize a flagship Star Wars product as being off-brand, even if it's fantastic in every other way, if it strays too far away from those ideals. If, to take an extreme hypothetical example, Episode IX were to end with the villains winning and taking over the galaxy and all the heroes either dead or co-opted to the dark side, then it be a movie which blows frickin' Citizen Kane out of the water in terms of film quality, and I'd still defend fans for denouncing it as a bad Star Wars movie. (I'm also uneasy about the prospect of not getting a redemption story for Kylo Ren in the movie, but not having seen it, I can't say categorically that it wouldn't work within the Star Wars brand.)

Yes, being "on-brand" constrains the franchise, but there are still an infinite number of stories you can tell within those constraints. Just as there are an infinite number of stories you can tell within the constraints of, say, the Tolkenian Middle-Earth brand, but stray too far from the core ideals and you get, well, Shadow of War.

In terms of Last Jedi, my sticking point is whether the somber, brooding nature of the film is too far removed from the adventure story nature of the movies which preceded it, including its original trilogy analogue Empire. I could believe that it goes too far, but I could just as easily believe that it doesn't. In fact, my expectation is that most probably, Episode IX will deliver a story so on-brand (and will also be overly derivative) that in hindsight, the more sober attitude of Last Jedi will work neatly as part of the greater whole, and most - though by no means all - fans will regard it in a more favorable light.

(I should also emphasize that, as I alluded in previous posts, I think the Star Wars franchise has room to mess around even with some of its core ideals outside of the flagship products without necessarily going off-brand. I think Rogue One succeeded at this, as did many old Expanded Universe stories which had more cynical attitudes, complex morality, downbeat endings, downright grimdark sensibilities, or similar deviations, but weren't directly attached to the original trilogy cast or the fate of the galaxy post-Jedi.)

tl;dr: there are many things about the sequel trilogy which I complain about because I dislike personally, but don't necessarily affect their quality as movies in general or Star Wars movies specifically. There's a much smaller subset of things where my personal dislike overlaps with a profound exasperation at what I see as a serious failure of creativity and imagination on the filmmakers part - but which I still think fall far short of ruining them either as movies in general or Star Wars movies specifically. There's also a tiny, tiny subset of actual or potential elements which I think could potentially undermine Episodes VIII and IX as good Star Wars movies - regardless of their qualities in general - but even there, I'm not convinced at this stage and I ultimately come down on the side of giving the benefit of the doubt.

That could pretty much be the motto of any given discussion of Star Wars, to be honest.

It's pretty evident from your posts on the subject that you have an extremely tightly defined personal vision of what Star Wars should be, which if it brings you joy then great but at the same time seems to be a recipe for disappointment. Ultimately, the only way the franchise can continue at all without treading on one person or another's investment is by simply ceasing to produce new product, because you can't get away with regurgitating literally the same thing over and over indefinitely; anything which does anything genuinely new with a fictional setting is intrinsically going to end up changing the parameters of that setting by doing so.

If there's one thing which the reactionary backlash to The Last Jedi has confirmed in my mind, it's that yoking a significant portion of your emotional well-being to a particular fictional franchise perpetuated as a business is a dangerous game. For me the only way to stay sane in fandom is to retain a clear understanding that other people's IP isn't your ballpark, and as welcome and comfortable as you may feel in it you're never going to be as secure or able to declare the parameters as you would be with your own creative work.